Our old house on Imoke street inside the University of Nigeria Nsukka campus, was a colonial British styled three-bedroom, three bath bungalow with a garage for my dad’s Renault on the left side, a huge open veranda to the right and a detached maid’s room that my brothers turned into their ”man-cave.”
It stood on what was quite a substantial portion of grounds (maybe a plot or more), on which we grew so much crop. There was a big mango tree that had the penchant to hang heavy with fruit right at the back, an avocado and grapefruit tree to the side of the veranda.
We tilled the ground ourselves with a hoe and grew crops ranging from cassava, yam tubers, yellow pepper, bitter leaf, curry leaf, potatoes, amaranthus, okra, corn, melon, lettuce, plantain and more. We grew a lot of the crops that we ate.
Sometimes, when the work was a lot, my dad would engage some labour hands to do the tilling whilst we did the sowing. You had to grow a combination of crops that performed well together, that way they would both do very well and the manure from our chicken coop helped in nourishing those plants. I learnt crop rotation through this process.
The house had a sprawling nature (they built them big back then), with big louvered windows that swung open outwards and mosquito nets installed to keep the pesky things away. Instead of a picket fence running round the house, it had a trimmed hedge of purple hibiscus running around it.
It was painted creamy oil paint colour but time and the elements matured its painted exterior to butter-yellow. Its corrugated zinc roof was reddish in colour. The rooms were coated in dusky blue and the hallway, living and dining room with the kitchen were cream in colour. The flooring was terrazzo and we scrubbed its floors with hard brush and foamy detergent every Saturday mornings.
I recollect my mum or dad apportioning spaces each Saturday morning and you had to scrub, mop and shine these floors to my dad’s satisfaction. Of course, there was no luxury of gadgets to carry out these chores. We performed these tasks manually with our bare hands, including washing our clothes.
Our house was quite a beehive. It was a middle class Nigerian home. My parents had six of us along with several young cousins who spent some part of their lives under our roof. It was in our culture to assist in raising less fortunate relatives and back then, when academicians were still valued, my parents were viewed as comfortable, so I grew up seeing them extend charity to other relatives who grew up and went to school under our roof.
The weekday mornings were filled with noisy and hurried preparation for school after a family devotion in the parlour, usually led by my mom and the evenings with noise of different things. Chattering voices, pounding mortar, squabbling siblings, music from my dad’s Grundig, loud singing from one person or the other.
Our weekends were equally filled with house chores, catechisms and block rosaries, play, social events and all manners of things we got up to.
It was always lively and during harvest season, we would all gather at the veranda to either peel cassava for processing, melon seeds for soup or corn for drying. These chores were performed with my mom or sometimes my grandma keeping our minds entertained with old folktales and songs.
The aromas/fragrance that floated through the butter-yellow house were of different blends. On Saturday mornings, the whiff of Omo Blue detergent and drops of dettol disinfectant which was used in scrubbing the floors dominated the air until the evening hours when it gets replaced by aromas emanating from one native pot or the other. This could be yam pottage, vegetable soup, goat-meat and bitter-leaf soup (which is one of my favorite native soups 🙂 etc. but there was an aroma that came to stay for a very long time.
Two particular aromas that linger most in my mind, maybe because they persisted for quite a long while, is the yeasty aroma of home made bread that my mom baked weekly. Slices of her bread slathered with Planta margarine, jam, marmite or peanut butter and a cup of Horlicks would fill and sit in your tummy for a better part of the day. The bread smell was soon joined with that of cake.
She ventured into baking cakes every other day and supplying shops in the neighbourhood as well as students hostels on campus, when the Federal Government started their incessant delays in paying staff salary which led to a lot of financial hardship in some homes.
My mom became quite resourceful with baking and crafting to augment their insufficient and epileptic salary payments.
We would cream the cake batter in a huge local mortar that she bought for that purpose, until she was able to save up to buy a Kenwood mixer.
I remember the flavour of vanilla essence and nutmeg added to the cake batter, the Topper butter that she used for so many years and the licking of the sugary creamy cake batter.
© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha
In response to The Daily Post Our House
What are the earliest memories of the place you lived in as a child? Describe your house. What did it look like? How did it smell? What did it sound like? Was it quiet like a library, or full of the noise of life? Tell us all about it, in as much detail as you can recall.
This an beautiful look into your childhood, bringing the reader right there with you.
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Thanks my dear. It was a lovely time, though I didn’t quite understand that then 🙂
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Yes a lovely look into your childhood!
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It was such a lovely time 🙂
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yes 🙂
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Oh I remember omo blue and dettol fragrance from my youth at my neighbours place. The butter yellow house sounds like a well organised paradise… Do You remember the stories your grandma and mama told you?
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Omo and Elephant blue detergent were regular features in a lot of homes back then 🙂 Now that I am older 😉 I appreciate all that we had back then and the simple lifestyle which was not perfect but blissful. Yes, I do remember loads of the stories 🙂 Thank you so much for visiting and your lovely comments. I appreciate.
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Lovely
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Thank you so much Megan. I appreciate your visit 🙂
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What a wonderful insight into your home and middle class Igbo life, thanks, I really enjoyed it! Now I’d like some fried plantain but I’m out of luck as its hard to come by where I live.
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Aww! I love plantain 🙂 and cannot imagine not having them. Thankfully the sell some here in Dubai (though by the time they get here they look all tired, but I manage them . Half loaf is better than none! Thanks sister G for visiting today. Enjoy a lovely day.
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Beautiful account of your childhood home.
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Thanks Khaya. The funny thing is that as at then, I had no idea what adult life would look like and now that I have had glimpses of more advanced adult life, I fully appreciate our simple older days.
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Those are wonderful memories, and it was lovely to share them with you 🙂
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Thank you Edwina. It does seem that our younger days sometimes outshines the older ones. We were carefree and lived simply 🙂
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What lovely memories 🙂 I could smell the delicious aroma of fresh bread…yum!
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Nena, whenever I catch the whiff of baked bread I takes me back and who knows, this might be responsible for my bread addiction 😉 Thanks for your time today my dear. I appreciate.
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Wow! Those are a lot of memories – and all from one house. I am raking my mind to find something that isn’t fiction and yet nice – and I draw a blank. Ok…trying again. Solving Physics problems from Halliday-Resnick – that would be greatest memory of my childhood.
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There were loads of them 🙂 Back then I thought it was hardship but now I look back in total appreciation and even wishing I could have just a quick journey back into those times. You make me laugh with your comments and I am sure that mother will not agree with you!
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She won’t agree with me on anything ever 🙂
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I agree with her 😉
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Jacqueline, I give up. Got to add you to my list of relatives and start writing about you 😀
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That would be precious :):)
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Prepare yourself for a journey to stardom.
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Let me get my blinders for all the brightness :):)
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The glitteratti!
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Yes 😉
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Jacqueline, i really loved hearing about growing up in your household. It explains why you are such an empathetic person. There was much love in that home…Clare
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Thanks Claremary. As a young child I saw my parents give and give generously even when they had so little, yet they never lacked.there was always enough and life was simpler. Indeed, there was a lot of love and several hours spent weeding as punishment and repentance for misbehaving 😉
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What wonderful memories…..
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Thanks my lady. I appreciate 🙂
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Jacqueline, you have described “home.” You should write some children’s books based on your childhood and stories your mama and papa told you. Lovely writing.
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Hmm! Oneta my dear friend, that is a very good advise. I really have to look into it. Thank you very, very much. Have a beautiful day today.
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Such wonderful memories presented so vividly. I can hear, see and feel every moment 🙂
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Some of those moments were chaotic 🙂 Thank you Kay. Enjoy a lovely day.
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Lovely — you packed this with so many sensory details — nice!
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Thank you Charlotte. I love these lovely comments of yours. Kind regards 🙂
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Normally it’s the food blogs with the pictures that make me hungry but you always paint such a vivid picture that it’s really no different…I could just taste the fresh bread, jam and vegetable soup. Oh my, I need a snack! 😀
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Don’t go raiding the fridge :):)
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*points finger* I have no one to blame butt you (pun intended)
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🙂
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Home..ahh. Childhood home… It’s weird what might remind us of home.
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The little things that get stuck in our minds 🙂
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Yep. The little stuff…
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🙂
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